


The Man from UNIT

by FernDavant



Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Social Media, UNIT, emojis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernDavant/pseuds/FernDavant
Summary: Matteusz's Instagram videos with Charlie attract unwanted attention from UNIT. Quill suggests murder and life on the run, and Charlie's inclined to agree at first, until Matteusz reveals his revolutionary plan: invite the man from UNIT over for tea and convince him Charlie's not an alien. Politely.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evilqueenofgallifrey (MayFairy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayFairy/gifts).



> From a speculative conversation with evilqueenofgallifrey that got out of hand. In her honor. I promised I'd open up a word doc and see what happened. This is what happened.

When Sergeant Florence began working at UNIT, he thought he would be saving the world from aliens in pitched battles with cool technology. And sure, that’s some of it. But today, well. Today is not a guns and explosions day. Today he is carefully investigating. Investigating a 17-year-old’s Instagram.

“ **Mattypolski1999** : (ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs toilet” reads the comment on a video featuring a blond young man failing remarkably at plunging a toilet, but succeeding in punching himself in his own face, before the video cuts to a tall young man comforting the blond, before flashing a peace sign.

 **“Mattypolski1999** : (ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs pb&j” is the comment on the next video. In this one, the same blond young man as before is eating a peanut butter sandwich, an expression on his face uncannily like one that Sergeant Florence saw on a dog who was fed peanut butter once. “Mbt-tay-uzz, wut iz thibs?” the boy (roughly) asks. “Never had peanut butter, Charlie?” a voice laughs off camera. A cut, and then the same two boys as before, the blond (Charlie, apparently) chugging a glass of milk, the taller boy (Mattypolski1999, obviously) ruffling his hair and kissing him on the forehead fondly.

On and on the Instagram account goes. (ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs. this. (ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs. that. There’s a 12-part series set on a football field, (ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs. football 1-12, each video of which has hundreds of likes and features ‘Charlie’ misunderstanding a rule of football, or completely failing at completing a basic physical task involved in the playing of football. Some of these videos feature another boy, called Ram (tagged @StrikerSingh), who demonstrates a few basic techniques with evident skill, which Charlie tries to mimic, usually failing spectacularly.

The videos usually end with both Charlie and Mattypolski1999 together, happy, amused. Charlie, although sometimes the butt of the joke, doesn’t seem to mind, and Mattypolski1999 is evidently not recording this without Charlie’s explicit permission, and all the videos are teasing but completely lacking in malice. Charlie certainly doesn’t seem hurt; in fact, he seems amazed and fascinated by almost everything, the concept of Instagram (“(ALIEN EMOJI) boyfriend vs. this Instagram 1-5”) included.

Sgt. Florence finishes viewing the last video and going over all the photos, then leans back and stretches.

“What’s the situation? Anything to report?” his superior officer, Captain Coolidge asks, walking in.

Florence snaps to attention, gesturing to the computer. “Matteusz Andrzejewski. Alias ‘Mattypolski1999.’ Seventeen-years-old, originally from Poland, immigrated here when he was 12-years-old. Parents Kasienka and Artur Andrzejewski, although he’s currently estranged from his family. EU records and everything check out. The boy in the video, though? Charles Smith. AKA Charlie. Alias ‘alien-emoji boyfriend.’ _He_ is interesting. His files check out with a quick glance, but…something funny about them. John and Jane Smith, his parents, which are two of the fakest names in the world, frankly. Sorry, sir, but they are. From Sheffield. Lived there his entire life until this year, but I can’t find any records of his enrollment in surrounding schools. Or any known associates. Or anything really. Plus, well. He’s weird, sir. “

Captain Coolidge raises an eyebrow. “Weird, Florence?”

“Never eaten peanut butter before. Didn’t realize that the different breeds of dogs are still all dogs. Completely incapable of understanding football or of even kicking a ball, really. Can’t read many road signs. The list goes on and on.”

“Maybe he’s just a little...touched?” Capt. Coolidge suggests.

“I thought that too, sir, but the academic records we do have, that, incidentally, only exist for this year, indicate that Charles Smith is an intelligent student, no behavioral problems. His teachers, mostly, like him, and he has a strong peer group.”

“Hmmm,” Capt. Coolidge muses. “Strange. Might be worth investigating.”

“I can get a squad sent ‘round, sir.”

“Softly, softly, Florence. The answer to everything isn’t found staring down the barrel of a gun. You’ve had training in undercover work, I assume?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Well, maybe you should pay a visit to this Charlie. Come up with a pretense for a bit of undercover work, and assess him yourself, in person.”

“That’s another thing,” Sgt. Florence recalls with a snap of his fingers. “His living situation is peculiar.”

“How so?”

“Both his parents died in a car accident recently, and he’s now the ward of a teacher at the school he attends. Can’t find any record that he knew the woman before, and it’s not like the school he’s going to is particularly prestigious or—“

Cpt. Coolidge smiles wryly, “I suppose she might be an alien too?”

“Can’t be sure yet, sir. She’s mostly in the periphery of the videos, so I haven’t done a serious study of her behavior and attitudes, but I can tell you she’s an extraordinarily angry woman—“

“That was a joke, Florence,” Cpt. Coolidge interrupts with a frown. “You know, this is your first big investigation. Perhaps you’re becoming too invested.”

Sgt. Florence’s whole posture changes as he very intently stares at Cpt. Coolidge. “Oh, no, sir. I assure you, I can handle this.”

Coolidge seems unconvinced, but shrugs anyway. “Alright then. Use the odd housing arrangements as cover for an in-person investigation. Say you’re from the council to check in on how Charlie is handling things and that Matteusz is alright as well.”

Sgt. Florence’s posture relaxes a bit as he nods. “Great, I’ll start actioning the plan immediately.”

**

“UNIT,” Quill says, slamming a letter down on the kitchen table, obscuring Charlie’s view of the English Literature homework he and Matteusz had been working on.

Charlie’s got his ‘I am a very confused alien,’ face on, and it only intensifies when he reads the letter Quill has so unceremoniously brought his attention to. “This says Hackney Council.”

Quill waves a hand, “Yes, well, it’s UNIT masquerading as Hackney Council.”

“How do you know?” Matteusz asks.

Charlie is decidedly less diplomatic. “Are you just being paranoid again?”

“I wasn’t being paranoid,” Quill snaps.

“He _was_ a robot,” Matteusz points out.

Quill gives a brief, almost imperceptible nod of thanks to Matteusz, then shoves their iPad into Charlie’s hands with more force than is strictly required.

Charlie makes a little _oof_ noise, then looks at what’s on the iPad. Matteusz leans into Charlie to read it as well.

“You hacked into UNIT?” Charlie asks. He sounds, surprisingly, impressed.

“No,” Quill admits, rolling her eyes. “I just knew that humans are incredibly stupid, so I Googled, ‘What is the UNIT password,’ and someone named Mickey Smith on a forum post from 2005 said it was ‘buffalo,’ so I tried that, and what do you know? Humans are exactly as stupid as I predicted, but people with the surname Smith aren’t nearly as stupid as my sample size indicated.”

Matteusz feels a little ashamed on behalf of his species. “They are investigating us?”

“Charlie, specifically,” Quill says, snatching the iPad away from the two of them before they have a chance to read it properly. Truth be told, from the way she’s scrolling through it, her eyes darting back and forth, it doesn’t appear that _she’s_ had the chance to read through it properly. “I, for one, have the wherewithal to actually fit in on this insubstantial rock. It looks like they started getting suspicious from…reports of…”

Quill trails off. And she is now looking at Matteusz with a look that is more murderous than usual.

Lesser men, the sort of men who didn’t date aliens and cheerfully cohabitate with said alien and their slave, the sort of men who didn’t have a ‘one day at a time’ outlook to alien invasions, the sort of men who feared other men who had the power and some of the desire to commit genocide, would have quailed under this glare.

Matteusz is none of these men.

Charlie, noticing this, pre-emptively says in a faltering voice, “Quill, you will not hurt Matteusz.”

“You can kill someone without hurting them,” Quill points out, teeth gritted.

“Is this best time for semantics argument?” Matteusz asks. This is not the first time Quill has threatened his life. “And besides, what did I do?”

“Your Instagram account. UNIT has found it…very interesting,” Quill grounds out.

Matteusz pales a little.

Charlie frowns. “The alien boyfriend stuff? I thought everyone knew that was a joke.”

“But it’s not _really_ a joke, is it?” Quill says. She’s started pacing. It reminds Matteusz of the way large carnivorous animals behave in too-small cages, which is, on the whole, not a bad metaphor for Quill. “You’re an actual alien. Who decided it would be _such fun_ to let your little human boyfriend broadcast it on the Information Superhighway.”

“Why do you always call it the Information Superhighway?” Matteusz asks, but it’s a reflex response. He’s distracted.

Because Charlie has a terrible look on his face. “What do we do?” Charlie questions Quill in a small voice.

Quill shakes her head. “They’re a large organization. I mean killing one of them and then hiding their body isn’t a problem, but then they’re going to start sending people in numbers that just rise exponentially. You can’t expect me to take down a whole para-military group with my bare hands. ”

Matteusz shakes his head in confusion, turning from Quill to Charlie and back again, surprised that Charlie seems to be giving this conversation serious consideration and thought.

“What do you suggest? Call the Doctor?” Charlie asks.

“Yes, but this man from UNIT will be here in two days. We need to get out of here and cover our tracks. Make sure no one will find us,” Quill replies.

Charlie nods. “We’re bringing Matteusz.”

“He’s the one who got us in this mess!” Quill protests. “He’s a weak point. If you bring him, you’re just asking for this sort of thing to happen again.”

“And if we leave him? What do you think will happen then? This isn’t an argument, Quill. He’s coming with us.”

Quill huffs. “Right, whatever. We’ll have to get off this island. Not tactically sound. And—“

“Erm, excuse me?” Matteusz says.

Charlie starts. He has evidently forgotten Matteusz’s presence, even as he worries about Matteusz’s safety.

Charlie is a very strange person.

“I have another idea,” Matteusz offers.

“Oh, do you?” Quill sneers. “I thought we were doing quite well trying to hash out a plan with the Prince’s theoretical tactical strategy background and my own significant experience with guerrilla warfare, but you know, I’m sure you have a cute anecdote to share about _The Great British Bake-Off_ , so have at it.”

“Quill—“ Charlie warns.

“What?” Quill asks, mock innocence. “I said he could speak.”

Matteusz shrugs and begins speaking. “What if we just convince this UNIT man that Charlie is not an alien?”

Quill laughs. Actually laughs. It’s not a derisive laugh, so much as a slightly manic laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion.

Charlie looks at Matteusz fondly, the way one might look at a wayward child. “Matteusz, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but, I am quite strange. I just…don’t fit in. I try! But, you know, I really don’t think we can fool some government inspector into thinking I’m not an alien. I couldn’t even fool April, and she’s extremely gullible.”

“April is nowhere near as gullible as people think,” Matteusz says firmly. “And I have faith in you, Charlie. And faith that together we can all convince this man.”

“Are you including me in this ‘we?’” Quill asks. “Because that sounds disgustingly sentimental. And besides, we’re not doing that. The likelihood of it working is vanishingly small—“

“But not impossible,” Matteusz interrupts.

“And the longer we stay where UNIT knows we are, the harder it will be to get out of here without—“

“Will it? Will it really?” Matteusz asks. “It seems to me that two days to construct a plan of escape is a benefit, not a detriment. Besides, you said yourself that you can…” Matteusz swallows and makes a weird face, “kill and hide one body. What is there to lose with letting me try my plan? If it does not work, we go with yours, a plan that is two days more prepared.”

“If we kill the UNIT man, they’ll know for sure that we’re aliens,” Quill argues.

“If we run away, will they not know the same thing?” Matteusz reasons.

Quill frowns, “What background in military strategy are you hiding from us?”

Matteusz shrugs, “I just read a lot of books and observe people. Is not military strategy. Just common sense, which is not common, I think, so that is why you might be confused.”

Quill is still eying him suspiciously, but after a moment she gives up and turns to Charlie. “Up to you, Prince. What you say, as you continuously like to remind me, goes.”

“We’ll try things Matteusz’s way,” Charlie says decisively. “I like it here. I’d like to stay here. And if worst comes to worst, at least it will give me time to say goodbye to the others.”

“That will not be necessary,” Matteusz says firmly, grabbing a hold of Charlie’s hand and looking him deep in the eyes. “I promise this.”

Quill rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’m going to plan our escape. You can plan how to make nice with government spooks.”

“I have some suggestions for you,” Matteusz tells Charlie. “I think we should go over them after English homework. Oh, suggestions for you too, Miss Quill.”

Quill is halfway out the room. She sticks her head back through the doorway and looks at Matteusz like she’s trying to kill him with her mind. “You what?”

“Give me just one hour of your time on the Thursday before this UNIT man comes. Please?” Matteusz hopes dearly that Quill, like most people, will be susceptible to the charms of his carefully calculated smile, designed to be both slightly goofy, but also endearing and genuine.

Quill’s eye twitches. “Whatever.”

**

It is Thursday. It is the day of reckoning.

Matteusz is sat in the sitting room, fussing with the tea he has bunked off the last two classes of school (including, much to her consternation, Miss Quill’s) in order to make for the UNIT man. There are tiny sandwiches and even tinier cupcakes, all offset by a sleekly modern tea-set that evidently came with the flat. Quill must never know that the recipe for the cupcakes is taken from _The Great British Bake-Off_.

“Why is everything tiny?” Charlie asks after stowing his school books upstairs and coming down to meet with Matteusz.

“I do not know. Cute, maybe? It just seemed like good idea,” Matteusz shrugs. Being Polish, he has never fully understood the British obsession with teatime, but he very much doubts the UNIT man will not enjoy it. Besides, it is very hard for anyone to not enjoy tiny cupcakes.

The front door bangs open loudly. Quill is, no doubt, home, and expressing her disapproval for this whole endeavor. More loud banging, before finally Quill joins them in the sitting room, arms crossed as she sits down in a chair and glares at the two boys.

Not for the first time, Matteusz finds himself comparing Miss Quill to a petulant, sulking teenager. As far as means of rebellion go, it is not a bad strategy, and Matteusz views it with some respect.

Respect and forethought, for Matteusz has a cup of coffee ready and waiting for Quill, just the way she likes it. He hands it over to her like a peace offering. Quill eyes him suspiciously, but then drinks the coffee.

“Now,” Matteusz says, turning first to Charlie. “Remember what I said.”

“Be open and honest about your life as far as possible, and utilize real emotions when talking to seem genuine,” Charlie says. He is repeating well-worn advice from Matteusz.

“Good,” Matteusz says with a smile. “Now, Miss Quill.”

Quill eyes Matteusz, but the coffee seems to have mollified her somewhat. “What?”

Matteusz is as open and honest as far as possible and utilizes his real emotions. “Is okay to be on your guard. You have more experience than either of us about people who are dangerous.”

Quill smirks and preens a little at that.

Following signs of his success, Matteusz continues. “If things go badly, Charlie has final say. But I am sure you can handle it very well. This UNIT man did not come for you, so I do not think is necessary for you to talk to him too much. Answer his questions. Try not to be curt, but is okay to be brief.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah—“ Quill says with a handwave. She’s been through with this conversation since the mention of Charlie. “Got it.”

“And one more suggestion,” Matteusz says, holding up a hand. “Smile.”

Quill looks like she’s going to throttle him, although, to be fair, Quill looks like that about most people most of the time. “What?”

Matteusz knows it is extremely rude to tell women to smile, but he has a good reason. “My babcia, she say to me always, ‘When you are sad: smile. When you are confused: smile. When you are angry: smile. Other people will see your smile, and they will not know what you are thinking, but they will think good of you. That gives you a kind of strength.’ I think this kind of strength will be good against this UNIT man.”

Quill looks bewildered. “Seriously?”

Matteusz smiles, “See? Try it.”

Quill looks at Charlie in what Matteusz can only describe as a ‘Humans! Amirite?’ expression. Charlie looks at Matteusz with a vaguely besotted expression.

In response, to Matteusz’s great surprise, Quill attempts a smile.

Matteusz does not want to be discouraging after Quill has been so game, but frankly, constructive criticism is desperately needed. “Perhaps, maybe, less teeth? Also, make your eyes squint more. It will make the smile more genuine.”

Quill swears at him, mumbles something about Matteusz’s advice having been strategically sound so far, then tries again.

This smile looks more like Quill’s hiding a secret, and the secret is your impending murder, but Matteusz feels like he can work with that, so doesn’t offer further criticism. “Good!”

“Did I forget anything? Any questions?” Matteusz asks, directing this more to Charlie than Quill.

Charlie shakes his head. “Nothing. Only the waiting left. I guess we just have to hope for the best.”

“Hope is stupid,” Quill mumbles, eating a tiny sandwich angrily.

**

It is Thursday. It is the day of reckoning.

Sgt. Florence smooths down his suit nervously, glancing around the neighborhood, wondering, as most people do, when Shoreditch got so tone-y, or, for that matter, how someone on a teacher’s salary can afford the rent on a place like this.

Florence cracks his spine and tries to adjust his posture away from military stiffness, but still well within the range of bureaucratic stiffness. It’s his first bit of undercover work, and every little detail is important.

With a final deep breath, Sgt. Florence rings the doorbell and waits.

(Unbeknownst to him, Matteusz has been standing in the hallway, holding Quill back from opening the door on Sgt. Florence as soon as she spied him through the window. “That is weird! Do not be weird. It will not make good impression,” Matteusz whispers harshly, only managing to hold Quill back by wedging himself between the hallway’s two walls, and holding on to her arm for dear life. She is surprisingly strong. Must be an alien thing.)

After a completely normal amount of time waiting, the door opens, and Sgt. Florence tries to project an air of confident professionalism to the same angry blonde woman he’d seen briefly in some of the videos.

“You’re the Hackney guy I take it?” the woman asks.

“Miss Quill, I presume?” Sgt. Florence says finally, a bit taken aback by this woman’s apparent lack of fucks-given over this situation (a not uncommon response to Quill).

“Presumptions are better than assumptions,” Quill responds before pushing the door all the way open. “Come on, get inside.”

Sgt. Florence, still slightly wrong-footed, follows Quill into the flat’s sitting room to find both the boys from the video sitting there in front of a table upon which a rather impressive tea is set.

“Charles Smith?” Sgt. Florence asks.

The young man gets to his feet, stiffly offering a hand to shake to Sgt. Florence, glance darting to Matteusz. “Charlie. I go by Charlie.”

“Alright,” Sgt. Florence says, shaking Charlie’s hand. There’s nothing particularly alien about the handshake, although Florence isn’t quite sure what an alien handshake would feel like. “Then you must be Matteusz.”

The other, very tall young man stands up and shakes Sgt. Florence’s hand as well. “Matteusz Andrzejewski, sir. And your name?”

Sgt. Florence panics. Shit. How could he have not prepared for this. “Mr. Sicily,” he offers, inventing the stupidest, most transparent alias known to man.

Matteusz does not seem to notice, but instead offers agreeably, “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sicily. Would you like some tea? Something to eat?”

“Well,” Sgt. Florence says, sitting down in a chair Matteusz has motioned towards. “Don’t mind if I do.”

It’s probably a bad idea, but the whole spread looks delicious. When nothing kills him after eating it, and he has some tea in his stomach, he starts getting down to business.

Both Matteusz and Charlie are sat in front of him, together on a couch. They are sat very close together, periodically holding hands. The two seem to care about each other a great deal, as much in person as they did in the videos.

Miss Quill, meanwhile, isn’t sitting. She is instead looming behind Sgt. Florence. Florence, who has never seen active combat, still finds himself peculiarly uneasy, which is absurd, since it’s this Charlie kid he’s been sent to investigate, and Captain Coolidge did not rank Quill as a threat.

(Quill, who has seen active combat, finds herself peculiarly disappointed, as ‘Mr. Sicily’ seems to be woefully unskilled in both espionage and threat assessment, and if—truthfully, when—things go tits up, will not be a challenge at all to take down.)

“I suppose we should get down to business,” Sgt. Florence says, wiping his palms nervously on his trouser legs.

“Yes,” Charlie nods.

“Your letter was very vague,” Matteusz says. “What exactly did you want to see Charlie and I about?”

“Well, the council is very serious about child protection, and we received word from some teachers at Coal Hill about your unusual living arrangements.”

“Which teachers?” Quill asks sharply.

No teachers, truthfully, but that’s neither here nor there. “Such reports are confidential, I’m afraid.”

“Convenient,” Quill murmurs.

Sgt. Florence cranes his neck to look behind him at Quill. It is very hard to get a measure on the woman.

“What concerns you about my living arrangements?” Charlie interrupts.

Sgt. Florence returns his attention to the matter at hand. “Ah, well in your case, the unorthodoxy of it all, the sudden death of your parents, the change of location. We just thought it best to check up on you, see how you are handling things after such a traumatic event.”

Charlie’s expression turns to a sad one. “How do you think I’m handling it? It is not something that is easy.”

“So your parents really did die?” Sgt. Florence asks curiously, and then curses himself.

“Yes,” Charlie says, his entire demeanor gone icy, something slightly frightening about his manner suddenly, yet all too human. “Yes, my parents really did die. Why would you assume otherwise?”

“N-n-n-no reason. It’s just your circumstances for leaving Sheffield were quite abrupt and we couldn’t find—“

“There was nothing left for me there except for bad memories,” Charlie says, tone slightly bitter. “A—a close family friend suggested I leave, and I agreed.”

In Sgt. Florence’s peripheral vision, he can see Quill leaning herself against one of the sitting room’s walls, staring at Charlie curiously.

“Miss Quill? Did she suggest it?” Sgt. Florence prompts.

“No, another friend,” Charlie says.

“Why aren’t you staying with that friend?”

“These are very strange questions,” Matteusz says with a frown. He knows why ‘Mr. Sicily’ is _really_ asking them of course, but he thinks it might be good to point out how rude, how obvious the man is being, to play innocent.

“Yes, they are,” Charlie agrees. “Quill was who my parents wished to put in charge of my protection.”

“You call her Quill?” Sgt. Florence asks, trying to sound conversational. Undercover training was nowhere near as thorough as it ought to be. He’s going to make a complaint.

“Everyone calls me Quill,” Quill drawls, levering herself up from the wall. “Does the council investigate nicknames too?”

“We just try to be thorough,” Sgt. Florence assures. “Particularly when it comes to the social media presence of minors. Perhaps I should turn the conversation to Mattypolski1999.”

“Did I do something wrong?” Matteusz asks. “I did not break the Terms of Service. I read them even!”

“It’s just unwise to post that much about yourself online,” Sgt. Florence offers.

“I do not post my full name. Or where I live. Or even the school I go to,” Matteusz says with a shrug.

“Yes, but you post an awful lot of information about your boyfriend,” Sgt. Florence points out. “Too much. And there have been some concerns, Charlie, about some of your life skills.”

Matteusz starts laughing. “Oh my God. Are you—do you mean to say you think that is all real?”

Charlie has broken out into a grin too. “You can’t mean—you don’t mean that this is about the alien boyfriend stuff?”

“I—“ Sgt. Florence again.

“Do you really think that he has never eaten peanut butter before? Charlie, you are a better actor than I thought. Perhaps we should try out for school plays.”

“You mean, it’s all…?”

“A skit. A game. Did you see how many likes it gets? It is very popular at school,” Matteusz says.

Charlie has a look of amazement on his face. “This is really about that? That stupid joke?”

“Mr. Sicily. Sir,” Matteusz begins. “Charlie is very, how do I say this, socially awkward.”

“It’s okay,” Charlie says, patting Matteusz’s hand. “I am. You’re not insulting me.”

Matteusz smiles at him. “And everyone at school noticed that. They would call him an alien. And it was not too nice. But then I told him, maybe we could turn this around. Make the joke our joke.”

“And if I interact with all those people online, maybe it could make it easier to interact with them in person. I think it’s working. I have new friends, like Ram. Matteusz is very clever. I really don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Sgt. Florence is still suspicious, but the genuine bafflement, the almost mocking way the two boys are treating him, is making him grow more unsure by the second. “And so, but then, I mean, what about the football stuff? You couldn’t even kick it into the goal.”

Charlie flushes. “I’m not good at football. Is that so strange?”

“I mean, not necessarily, but what about, what about you, Mr. Andrzejewski. Your living arrangements.”

“What about them?” Matteusz asks. He is smiling openly, as pleasant and charismatic as he has been in any of the videos.

“Why are you also living with Quill?”

“Miss Quill, I would think, since you’re so concerned with the matter,” Quill pipes up, and Sgt. Florence jumps rather badly. The woman is directly behind him, hands curled around the top of the chair he’s sitting in, all of this done silently and without his notice.

Matteusz remains as calm and as magnanimous as ever. “My parents and I had a disagreement about Charlie. They did not like him. Miss Quill and Charlie were kind enough to offer me place to stay.”

“Did they dislike him because he was strange?”

Matteusz is no longer calm nor magnanimous. “No, Mr. Sicily. They disliked him because he was male. Do you dislike him because he is strange? Maybe find him queer?”

Sgt. Florence sputters, “No, no, nothing like that! I only—my only concerns are about—child welfare.” His sentence has trailed off into squeaks.

“Hm. The children seem quite well, and we’ve been more than fair,” Quill says, as Sgt. Florence finds himself tipped out of his chair and into a standing position.

“Yes,” Matteusz says, stone-faced. “Time to go, I think. Very nice meeting you, Mr. Sicily.”

“Erm, yes, I’ll—if I have any further concerns, I’ll tell the council and—“ but Mr. Sicily has already been unceremoniously rushed out the door by two teenaged boys and their unsettling legal guardian.

**

“He wasn’t very good at his job, was he?” Charlie asks, slightly puzzled.

“Do you think he thinks we’re aliens?” Matteusz asks.

“Maybe, but I also think he’s too embarrassed to say anything further,” Quill replies. She yawns and stretches like a cat. “In the meantime, I’m tired, and I have no desire to go to France, so let’s hold off on the fleeing the country thing, shall we? We can handle it later if UNIT thinks to send someone else sniffing ‘round.”

“Agreed,” Charlie nods.

“Good job, Polish one,” Quill says off-handedly as she walks out of the room. “You handled him quite impressively.”

Charlie looks at Matteusz bewilderedly. “Did she just compliment you?”

“She is a strange woman,” Matteusz says with a shrug. “But strange is not necessarily bad.”

**

UNIT FILE NO. 3657-9A

RE: POTENTIAL ALIEN LIFEFORM MASQUERADING AS STUDENT

PRIMARY: SGT. MARCUS FLORENCE

SUPERVISOR: CAPT. TERRENCE COOLIDGE

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS: Initial research of Instagram account mattypoleski1999 (Matteusz Andrzejewski), conducted in response to activity triggered from UNIT internet scanning algorithm ALIENORWEIRDO.EXE, indicated unusual behavior consistent with alien entity from associate of Andrzejewski’s, one Charles Smith. Further records search indicated some discrepancies regarding Smith, and pursuant to these discrepancies, a reconnaissance mission was undertaken by Sgt. Florence. Results of reconnaissance mission were inconclusive as mission went poorly for reasons speculated upon and detailed in REPORT 27539, appended to this casefile.

FURTHER COURSE OF ACTION: 29 November 2016—Suggested second reconnaissance mission. Perhaps undercover placement at suspect’s school?

MARKED SCHEDULE 57: 30 November 2016

CASE CLOSED due to SCHEDULE 57, involvement of COAL HILL ACADEMY (formerly COAL HILL SCHOOL). No longer within UNIT-proper jurisdiction. This file forwarded to SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR (CODENAME DOCTOR), as should all SCHEDULE 57 files in the future.

 


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